Shakespeare Calling

Monday, February 5, 2018

The shortest month starts with what
might prove to be the year’s longest monthly report. A lot has been happening
with Shakespeare in our lives. The most exciting is of course that we have
booked our tickets at the Globe for Hamlet
together with our oldest Shakespeare friends, EG and EG. We’re so happy that we
will be able to spend time together with them in London. And how incredibly
lucky we are that Hamlet is playing at the Globe!

As always, I will once again mention to
visitors of this blog that Shakespeare Calling – the book is
available for purchase. Please
help promote the book by buying it, of course, and telling your friends about
it, by liking and sharing it on Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Bokus…. And please
encourage your local book shops and libraries to
buy it. Thank you. Your support is
needed to keep this project alive.

FINALLY easilyavailable for those of you in Great
Britain and Europe on this site:

In the novel A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara there
is only one mention of Shakespeare in all the 800+ pages: someone sketched
designs for a production of The Tempest.
Fewer pages and more Shakespeare might have made this somewhat good novel the
great novel some already think it is.

In the
witches-coming-of-age YA novel Half Bad
by Sally Green the author starts with one of my favourite quotes: ‘There is
neither good or bad, but thinking makes it so’ from Hamlet. In her acknowledgements the author admits that she hasn’t
read a lot of Shakespeare, but this quote was pivotal in her writing of this
novel.

The title of Anita
Shreve’s The Stars Are Fire is a
quote from Hamlet which she includes before the novel starts but no mention is
thereafter made of Shakespeare.

In The Night Is for Hunting, by John
Marsden, Ellie compares herself to ‘that guy in Shakespeare who’s turned into
an ass’ because she was listening so hard that she felt her ears were growing.

In Diane
Setterfield’s The Thirteenth Tale the
book lover narrator, when presented with the theoretical question of whether to
save her beloved books or a human life concludes, ‘Of course all of Shakespeare
was worth more than a human life.’ Oh dear! I hope we are never faced with that
choice!

On the first page of Moi qui n’ai pas connue les hommes by
Jacqueline Harpman (in English I Who Have
Never Known Men, read in the Swedish
Hon som aldrig kände männen) the narrator writes that she has started
reading the introductions of books where, for example, it might be explained why
a new translation of Shakespeare is needed. Further on in the novel

she considers that
her story is as important as Hamlet’s or King Lear’s ‘as that Shakespeare has
taken the bother to relate in detail’ (translated from the Swedish)

near the end of the book
she wonders if she has understood Shakespeare

and as she lays
dying, in pain, at the end, she asks, ‘How can prince Hamlet’s father appear
and talk to him if he’s dead?’

Yuval Noah Harari
mentions Shakespeare three times in his Sapiens
– A Brief History of Humankind

‘…even if a
Neanderthal Romeo and a Sapiens Juliet fell in love, they could not produce
fertile children, because the genetic gulf separating the two populations was
already unbridgeable.’ Well, that, and being they were Romeo and Juliet they
would die before they got that far….

‘Attending gruesome
executions was a favourite pastime for Londoners and Parisians in the era of
Shakespeare and Molière.’

‘Producing a film
about the life of some super-cyborg is akin to producing Hamlet for an audience of Neanderthals.’

In Solaris, the sci fi classic by Stanislaw
Lem, Snow, one of the astronauts/researchers on the space station studying the
mystical planet Solaris, says to the narrator Kelvin, about fetishes, ‘the
feeling he has for it is perhaps as overwhelming as Romeo’s feelings for
Juliet.’

Margaret Atwood’s Hag-Seed has now been translated into
Swedish. The review of it in Dagens
Nyheter calls it a dark comedy and delightful interpretation of
Shakespeare’s masterpiece (The Tempest).
I couldn’t agree more.

In an interview with
Carole Ann Ford, who played Susan, the first Doctor Who’s granddaughter, she
said that though she has taught Shakespeare, she has never played Shakespeare
but would love to.

In an interview with
another Doctor Who actor, William Russell, he mentions that he played Lancelot
in a school production of The Merchant of
Venice and Mercutio in Romeo and
Juliet at Oxford.

In describing two of
the main characters in Erin Kelly’s The
Poison Treea minor character compares
the brother and sister as lookalikes in a bizarre Shakespearean comedy. Later,
the narrator comments that her friend, the actor Bibi, would have said that the
run-down theatre in which she was performing would not matter because the
language of Shakespeare or Ibsen is so powerful that the venue is unimportant.

In the film Their Finest the minister of war, Jeremy
Irons, recites the ‘We few we happy few’ monolog to pep his staff.

In the novel Dust by Elizabeth Bear the author uses
Shakespeare quotes to head some of her chapters. Sadly, it didn’t help. I gave
up after about 50 pages. Just didn’t grab my attention.

In the TV series with
Robert Carlyle Hamish Macbeth(bought both for the title and for
Robert Carlyle), some smirks and giggles have met him when he introduces
himself, but it is not until season three episode three that a clear reference
is made. Says the villain: ‘Macbeth, eh?To be or not to be, that is the question.’ Replies Hamish: ‘That’s
Constable Hamlet. He’s up in the next village.’

Further since last time:

Read aloud with Hal: Twelfth Night.

Started writing: a
text on Twelfth Night

Watched: the BBC and
Branagh versions of same.

Played again with
friends EG + EG: ‘Shakespeare – the Bard Game.’

Booked tickets for Hamlet at the Globe in July! Oh yes!

The insult for today,
5 February 2018, in our calendar of Shakespeare insults, a gift from JS, is ‘What
a pied ninny’s this! Thou scurvy patch! From The Tempest. But who speaking to whom? Caliban? To Caliban? I’ll
google it. Right, Caliban to Stephano and Trinculo.

Monday, January 1, 2018

Happy New Year! It has been a turbulent
year, this 2017, but here we are, entering 2018 with perhaps more optimism than
I would have thought possible. What fools these mortals be but also how
noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and moving how express and
admirable.

As always, I will once again mention to
visitors of this blog that Shakespeare Calling – the book is
available for purchase. Please
help promote the book by buying it, of course, and telling your friends about
it, by liking and sharing it on Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Bokus…. And please
encourage your local book shops and libraries to
buy it. Thank you. Your support is
needed to keep this project alive.

FINALLY easilyavailable for those of you in Great
Britain and Europe on this site:

·In the novel Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh the title
character is a misfit, ‘like Joan of Arc, or Hamlet, but born into the wrong
life – the life of a nobody, a waif, invisible.’ Later she had to leave school
to take care of her mother and was secretly relieved but blamed her parents for
her unhappiness and wished she was ‘in school again learning…the history of
art, Latin, Shakespeare, whatever nonsense lay in store.’

·The Swedish YA
fantasy novel Norra Latin by Sara
Bergmark Elfgren is about the historical upper level school Norra Latin (which
in reality is now a conference centre). In the novel it is still a school with
a theatre program. It also has magic and ghosts but so much Shakespeare that
the author was interviewed in the latest number of the journal of the Swedish
Shakespeare Association.

·A literature critic
compared the current turbulence in the Swedish Academy (brought about by the
#metoo campaign) to a Shakespeare drama.

·In the rather sweet
YA novel about werewolves, one of the two main characters, Sam, who is
sometimes a wolf but often human, says to the other main character Grace’s
mother, who claims not to be disappointed in her daughter’s practical nature:
‘Methinks the mom doth protest too much.’ Whether or not he knows he’s quoting
Shakespeare is not mentioned.

Further since last time:

·Finished reading
aloud with Hal: The Two Noble Kinsmen.
Some by Shakespeare, more by Fletcher. Quite a strange play but not without
interest.

·Had a book signing
event, Saturday 9 December, with my alter ego Rhuddem Gwelin at the local
bookshop Klackenbergs in Sundbyberg, Sweden. We mostly sold and signed the
Merlin books but Shakespeare Calling –
the book received not a little attention as well

·Received from friend JS
– a calendar of Shakespeare insults. The insult for today, 1 January 2018, is
‘That quaffing and drinking will undo you’ (Twelfth
Night). Very mild as Shakespeare insults go!

·Discovered that the
public library in Östersund (northern Sweden) has Shakespeare calling – the book as an e-book.

Posted this month

·‘Reflections’ on The Two Noble
Kinsmen https://rubyjandshakespearecalling.blogspot.se/2018/01/the-two-noble-kinsmen-reflections.html

It’s
worth reading. It has many themes one recognises from earlier Shakespeare –
male friendship, female friendship, strong women, rivalry in romance, but all
with a feeling of… more.

The
story: On the day of the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta, three widows appeal
to Theseus to go to war against Thebes because their husbands have not been
given a proper burial. The two noble kinsmen, Palamon and Arcite, fight to
defend their city but are captured. They both see Hippolyta’s sister Emilia
from their prison window and though they have just declared eternal love and
friendship for each other they both fall in love with Emilia and become rivals.
Plot twists get them both out of prison. The jail keeper’s daughter goes mad
with love for Palamon. Theseus demands that Emilia choose one of the two. She
can’t so they must duel to the death for her hand. Arcite wins. Palamon is to
hang. Arcita falls off his horse and dies. Palamon and Emilia are wed.

It’s
funny to the point of parody and then suddenly it’s not. All this we recognise
in Shakespeare. Fletcher was a good student.

I’m not
going to do a great deep analysis, but I would like to mention a few points of
interest.

·Hippolyta is a strong character, though she has but few lines. The three
queens at the beginning appeal not only to Theseus but to Hippolyta as well:

Honoured Hippolyta,

Most dreaded
Amazonian, that hast slain

The scythe-tusked
boar… (Act 1.1).

When the soldiers then head off to war Hippolyta
says

We have been soldiers
and we cannot weep

When our friends don
their helms… (Act1.3).

Oh, that Shakespeare never wrote a whole
play about Hippolyta! What a character he would have made her. Much more
interesting than Cleopatra!

·The two noble kinsmen’s
love for one another is so passionate that I’m surprised this play hasn’t
become a flagship for the Pride movement.

Arcite:

We are one another’s
wife, ever begetting

New births of love: we
are father, friends, acquaintance.

We are, in one
another, families:

I am your heir and
you are mine…

Palamon:

Is there record of
any two that loved

Better than we do,
Arcite? (Act 2.2, Fletcher)

I suppose the fact that two minutes later
they’re both madly in love with Emilia and deadly rivals brings their sincerity
somewhat into question but still, I find the quotes a bit sweet.

·The jailer’s daughter
is very much an Ophelia character in her passion and madness. She shows,
however, more insight and initiative. She has fallen in love with Palamon
though she knows it is pointless:

Why should I love
this gentleman?

‘Tis odds

He never will affect
me: I am base,

My father the mean
keeper of his prison,

And he a prince. To
marry him is hopeless,

To be his whore is
witless. Out upon’t!

What pushes are we
wenches driven to

When fifteen once has
found us! (Act 2.4, Fletcher)

Fifteen she may be, but she is also
feisty:

Let
all the dukes and all the devils roar,

He
is at liberty: I have ventured for him

And
out I have brought him, to a little wood

A
mile hence I have sent him…

…there
he shall keep close

Till
I provide him file and food, for yet

His
iron bracelets are not off (Act 2.6, Fletcher).

I could go on. As I write I discover
that there is quite a lot of interest in this play. I wish Shakespeare had
written it when he was in his most prolific and brilliant period – not to put
down Fletcher, his writing isn’t bad either. I wish we had some filmed
versions.

In any case, if you haven’t read it,
do. It’s worth it.

PS The RSC has
done a production in 2016. Perhaps a DVD is on its way?

Monday, December 4, 2017

Approaching the Winter Solstice. It’s a
good time to read Shakespeare and play the newly acquired Bard Game (see below).
If we can figure it out.

In this dark (literally and
figuratively) time, don’t let us forget to light candles, to hope and strive
for equality and a strong healthy planet. Why not continue to find inspiration
in Shakespeare?

Happy holidays to all!

As always, I will once again mention to
visitors of this blog that Shakespeare Calling – the book is
available for purchase. Please
help promote the book by buying it, of course, and telling your friends about
it, by liking and sharing it on Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Bokus…. And please
encourage your local book shops and libraries to
buy it. Thank you. Your support is
needed to keep this project alive.

In Star Trek, season 1 (from the 60’s – the
original!) Kirk and Spock are watching Arcturian Macbeth played by Kodos the Executioner. Then Lady Macbeth (a young
beauty) quotes Antony and Cleopatra
to Kirk. Later the cast does Hamlet
for the crew of the Enterprise.
Clever use of quotes throughout, including the episode title ‘The Conscience of
the King.’ Come to think of it, this was one of my early exposures to Shakespeare,
when I watched the series faithfully every week as a teenager in the 60’s.

Christopher Hill
opens the epilogue of his The Century of
Revolution with one of my favourite quotes: ‘There is nothing either good
or bad, but thinking makes it so.’

In Philip Roth’s American Pastoral Lou, the avid glove
maker, refers to Romeo and Juliet and
quotes, ‘See the way she leans her cheek on her hand? I only wish I was the
glove on that hand so I could touch that cheek.’

In the last episode
of Season Five of Buffy the Vampire
Slayer they are off to fight the evil god Glory: Spike – ‘Not exactly the
St Crispin speech’. Giles – ‘We few, we happy few.’ Spike – ‘We band of buggered…’

The entire film The Dresserwith Albert Finney and Tom Courtney is full of Shakespeare references.
Finney plays a grand old Shakespearean actor. Great film. See it!

In Peter Ackroyd’s Civil War he mentions that

it is believed that
Shakespeare introduced the masque in The
Tempest to celebrate the marriage between James’s daughter Elizabeth to
Frederick V of the Palatinate.

Frederick assumed the
Bohemian throne and thus Bohemia became a concern for James though ‘it was a
distant land of which he knew nothing, remarkable only for the scene of
shipwreck in Shakespeare’s The Winter
Tale, performed nine years before, in which it was miraculously granted a
sea coast.’

The Tempest was performed before the king on 1
November 1611 and Ackroyd emphasises the importance of music to the play and to
theatre in general at the time.

Further since last time:

Finished reading
aloud with Hal: King Lear

Wrote: ‘Nothing’ in King Lear

Ordered, received but
not yet played: ‘Shakespeare – the Bard Game.’

Gave: my lecture ‘Why
Shakespeare’ at the English Bookshop in Uppsala on Tuesday 7 November. A full
house!

Started reading aloud
with Hal: Two Noble Kinsmen. Some by
Shakespeare, more by Fletcher. Quite a strange play but not without interest.

Have booked: a book
signing event, Saturday 9 December, with my alter ego Rhuddem Gwelin at the
local bookshop Klackenbergs in Sundbyberg, Sweden. We hope to sign many copies
of Shakespeare calling – the book and
the Merlin Chronicles. Do stop by if you happen to live in the area!

Cordelia’s
‘nothing’ is everything. Lear has already destroyed the two older sisters by
his blatant favouritism and he has already brought strife upon his kingdom by
splitting it then refusing to really relinquish his power. Cordelia’s
‘nothing’, which in Lear’s defence could be interpreted as he did, was just one
more frightening shift in a world already in doubt of its identity.

Friends
of numbers will note that the word ‘nothing’ is used eighteen times in Act One
and thirty-four times throughout the play. Lear loses his hold on reality,
Gloucester loses his eyes, Edgar loses his father, Goneril and Regan have lost
everything long ago but don’t know it yet. These individuals – kings and lords
and princesses – are supposed to have power. From the first scene onward their
power crumbles, their control over their lives and their world – the control
they believed they had had – is wrenched from them and their world explodes in
storms and madness.

Lear who had
the most and who is the cruellest loses everything but so do the daughters he
has destroyed. His most loyal friends commit treason for his sake, those loyal
to the kingdom are vicious villains.

Sunday, November 5, 2017

It’s not quite blow, winds, rage blow
but it is November and windy and often grey and dark but that’s a good time to
read and give lectures on ‘Why Shakespeare?’ (see below) and listen to new CD’s
with Shakespeare music (see below). Yes, I’m OK with November!

As always, I will once again mention to
visitors of this blog that Shakespeare Calling – the book is
available for purchase. Please
help promote the book by buying it, of course, and telling your friends about
it, by liking and sharing it on Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Bokus…. And please encourage your local book shops
and libraries to buy it. Thank you. Your
support is needed to keep this project alive.

In the novel The Shining by Stephen King Wendy
jokingly calls her author husband Jack ‘the American Shakespeare’ and some 300
pages later when things have started to go wrong she reflects that the untidy
half-mad Jack resembled ‘an absurd twentieth-century Hamlet, an indecisive
figure so mesmerized by onrushing tragedy that he was helpless to divert its
course or alter it in any way.’

In the novel At Yellow Lake by Jane McLoughlin,
Etta’s hard-living mother says when Etta expresses surprise that her mother
might go back to college, ‘Yeah. College. Why do you sound so shocked...I
finished a whole semester before I had Jesse…English Lit, that was my major.
Shakespeare. Jane Austen…’

Dagens Nyheter informs us that the brilliant
Shakespearean (and elsewise) actor Jonas Karlsson has received the O’Neill
award for his ability to awaken sympathy for dark characters, citing his
interpretation of Richard III as an example. Jonas Karlsson was quoted as
saying that to celebrate he would be playing Richard III that evening.

In the film Gideon’s Daughter with Bill Nighy and
Emily Blunt, an excerpt from Richard III
(popular play!) is performed at the daughter’s end of term assembly.

In Love Actually (watched the next evening
because we can’t get enough of Nighy)

Hugh Grant as the
prime minister boasts to the American president, ‘We are the country of
Shakespeare, Harry Potter and David Beckham’s right foot.’

Colin Firth, a
mystery writer, as his pages blow into the lake: ‘It’s not Shakespeare.’

In Christopher Hill’s
The Century of Revolution he writes

in his introduction:
‘Shakespeare had thought of the universe and of society in terms of degree,
hierarchy; by 1714 both society and the universe seemed to consist of competing
atoms.’

‘Shakespeare’s
historical plays illustrate the Elizabethan sense that a strong monarchy was
essential to defend national unity against foreign invasion and domestic
anarchy.’

of the ‘boundless
individualism’ in Macbeth and King Lear, Coriolanus and The Merchant of Venice, and that in Hamlet ‘the conflict has entered the
soul of the hero.’

that in the late 17th
century: ‘Tragedy and comedy, which Shakespeare had integrated in his plays,
are now as sharply distinguished as prose and poetry….’

In the modern version
of King Kong one of the sailors says
to screen writer Adrien Brody as he passes, ‘Excuse me, Shakespeare.’

In the novel Lie of the Land by Amanda Craig

Lottie is worried
about her teen-aged son and her mother Marta says, ‘that way madness lies.’

Hugh, Lottie’s father-in-law,
about her and her husband Quentin’s marriage problems: ‘Love is not love that
alters when alteration finds or bends with the remover to remove.’ Which
sonnet? Any guesses?

Quentin, when
discussing problems in sleeping arrangements in the crowded house with Lottie,
who protests that her son can’t sleep in her bed: ‘No, that’d be altogether too
much like Hamlet. Jesus, Lottie!’

Hugh, who does not
have a good relationship with his son Quentin, tells him: ‘I’ll come back to
haunt you like Hamlet’s father.’

Further since last time:

Started reading aloud
with Hal: King Lear

Ordered, received but
not listened to: the 10-CD box Shakespeare
in Music

Preparations made:
for my lecture ‘Why Shakespeare’ at the English Bookshop in Uppsala on Tuesday
7 November

Sunday, October 1, 2017

There’s been a bit more Shakespeare
action this past month, both in my little world, and out there in the big one.
After much struggle I finished a text on that difficult play, Measure for Measure, which seems to
become more problematic each time we read it. I’m not completely unhappy to
leave it for this time, but what to choose next? A more pleasant problem!

As always, I will once again mention to
visitors of this blog that Shakespeare Calling – the book is
available for purchase. Please
help promote the book by buying it, of course, and telling your friends about
it, by liking and sharing it on Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Bokus…. And please encourage your local book shops
and libraries to buy it. Thank you. Your
support is needed to keep this project alive.

In the novel A Separation by Katie Kitamura the
narrator compares her mother-in-law to Lady Macbeth. She’s not terrible fond of
her mother-in-law.

In Stephen King’s massive
It (1090 pages) he only manages two
references to Shakespeare:

One of the characters
is taking a writing course and the teacher asks, ‘Do you believe Shakespeare
was just interested in making a buck?’
implying of course that he wasn’t. Well, he probably was, maybe not only but
quite a lot.

When Beverly insists
that it’s her husband who has all the talent, not her, friend Richie says,
‘Methinks the lady doth protest too much.’

In Lisa McInerney’s The Glorious Heresies one of the thugs is
called Shakespeare ‘because he was as verbose a thug as you could find.’

In the film Genius the author Tom Wolfe (Jude Law)
considers himself Caliban, ugly and deformed, and his editor Max Perkins (Colin
Firth) exchanges some quotes with him.

Dagens Nyheter

had a long article
about a children’s illustrated version of Hamlet
by Barbro Lindgren and Anna Höglund. It’s called Titta Hamlet (Look Hamlet) and the first line is, ‘Look Hamlet.
Hamlet not happy.’ The reviewer thinks it’s a small masterpiece. ‘This is not
just a good start for those who want to meet Shakespeare for the first time,
but a surprisingly strong interpretation even for those who have kept company
with Hamlet for a long time.’

is selling tickets to
Rickard III (with Jonas Karlsson, we
saw it a couple of years ago – brilliant!).

had an article about
great finds in used book stores and mentions William Shakespeare – comedies, histories and tragedies. Published
according to the true original copies. The second impression.’ It’s the
most expensive book on antikvariat.net, printed in 1632 and sold for 2 440398
Danish crowns in the Aanehus Aarhus antikvariat.

The TV program Go’kväll also talked about the above-mentioned
kids’ version of Hamlet and the reviewer said essentially that the kids she’s
read it to love it.

In the YA fantasy novel
City of Bones the author Cassandra
Clare starts out with a quote from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: ‘I have not slept. /Between the acting of a dreadful
thing /And the first motion, all the interim is / Like a phantasm, or a hideous
dream’. Sadly, though the novel is entertaining (somewhat), this quote does not
make it great literature.

Further since last time:

Started reading:
James Shapiro’s 1606 – The Year of King
Lear

Finished reading
aloud with Hal: Measure for Measure

Started reading aloud
with Hal: the Sonnets, then reading the Swedish translation by Walter Dan
Axelsson, then listening to those that are on the CD From Shakespeare with Love (bought because David Tennant reads many
of them). So far we’ve read up to 18 (‘Shall I compare thee…’). Sadly, I really
don’t like many of these early sonnets.